Chinese Cooking Recipes - How to Make Ramen Dashi

Chinese Cooking Recipes - How to Make Ramen Dashi
By Zane Minninger

Ramen is the general term for a bowl of noodle soup in Japan. It originated from la mian, one of many old Chinese cooking recipes involving noodle that were pulled. Noodles are generally the texture and filling part of the dish while the broth, also known as dashi, gives the dish flavor.

The Recipe

Ingredients
--1 can (14oz) of your favorite broth (chicken, beef, vegetable, ETC)
--1/2 cup of scallions or green onions (sliced)
--4 or 5 shiitake mushrooms
--1 egg
--1 sheet of dried kelp or sushi seaweed (nori)
--1 teaspoon of fresh ginger
--1 tablespoon of soy sauce
--1 tablespoon of teriyaki sauce
--3 oz of any meat thinly sliced (optional)

The Preparation

Preparing your vegetables before you start is a must as they will be added quickly at different points in the cooking process. Begin by organizing your harder vegetables away from your softer vegetables. Harder vegetables need to cook for a little more time than the softer ones. This would include bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and broccoli if you chose those vegetables. This recipe only has softer vegetables.

Once separated, prepare each vegetable. Green onions should be sliced, kelp and seaweed should be cut into 2-3 inch strips about 1/2 inch wide. A vegetable peeler can be used on the fresh ginger to clean the skin off and then to slice it into small strips. Shiitake mushrooms can be either sliced or left whole depending on how you want to eat them.

The Cooking

First pour the can of broth into a pot and set the high to heat. Add the soy sauce and teriyaki sauce. You don't have to use the full tablespoon but it should be added to taste. Place any hard vegetables you have in the broth now.

Once the broth starts to boil turn down the heat to medium and add the scallions or green onions, ginger, and the meat. When the boiling has stopped add the mushrooms. Let this cook on medium for 5 minutes.

After the 5 minutes has passed get ready to add the egg. Once you break the egg and add it to the broth quickly stir the egg breaking it up before it cooks completely. This will give you small egg ribbon like pieces. If you choose to hard boil your egg, simply peel it and cut it in half length wise and wait to put it in the dashi after it is in a bowl.

Pour the dashi into a bowl adding the kelp or seaweed to it as a garnish.

Other Choices

Chinese cooking recipes use so many different vegetables to flavor their dishes that just about any vegetable can be used in dashi and ramen. Because of the variety of vegetables you can add to the Chinese cooking recipes, choose the vegetables that you like. Check out these other Chinese cooking recipes at http://www.squidoo.com/chinese-cooking-recipes-the-best-places-for-recipes-of-chinese-cooking.

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